The enduring legacy of Justin Trudeau

Pierre Poilievre has one thing going for him and one thing only; he is not Justin Trudeau.  Not being Trudeau is enough to fuel his popularity even though he supports many of the insanely destructive policies Trudeau does.  Here he is sounding very Trudeauish refusing to acknowledge that reducing immigration could help solve Canada’s housing crisis.

The housing crisis in Canada is a 4 alarm fire.  We are dumping migrants on to city streets with winter only 3 months away.  Poilievre’s solution is to continue pouring gasoline on the fire while he figures out how to build more fire engines.  There is no doubt that eliminating the ridiculous restrictions, which make it difficult to build anything in Canada, is the right long term solution.  But, even if those restrictions disappeared overnight we would still have a problem.  It is simply not realistic to think that we can suddenly start building 4 times as many houses every year.

No matter how stupid a regulation is businesses will adapt because they must.  The construction industry has already adapted to a system that limits the number of houses they can build.  Lifting those restrictions will not suddenly cause more houses to be built.  Supply chains and work forces must be expanded to accommodate the increased activity.

The assumption is that the new migrants will be the workforce but that is a dangerous assumption.  Construction requires skilled tradesmen.  If the migrants are not already tradesmen when they arrive in Canada it will take 4 years to train them; if they can be trained at all.  The last number I saw was that 70% of new Canadians entered Canada under the family re-unification program.  That means they were not chosen because of their skills or education.  They got in simply because they were related to someone else who was already here.  That might be compassionate but it is an incredibly stupid economic policy.  If migrants arrive without a grade 12 equivalent they will never become the tradesmen Canada needs.

Under Trudeau Canada admits more than 4 times as many immigrants and refugees each year than what we did previously.  Poilievre intends to do the same but he at least acknowledges that we will need to build 6 million homes by 2030.  He does not acknowledge, however, that building this many homes is an impossible dream.  If he does not know this he is stupid; if he does know it then he is gas lighting Canadians and he is a liar.  Poilievre is riding a wave of popularity simply because Canadians don’t believe he is as stupid or as dishonest as Justin Trudeau.  Justin set the bar pretty low in Canada, didn’t he?